A Beautiful Mind

Staying in New York, Nash often visits the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at the University of New York on his way to Princeton, eventually “spending at least as much time there as at the Institute of Advanced Study” (216). He enjoys the friendly atmosphere and the difficult challenges being undertaken by the scholars there.

One of the academics, Louis Nirenberg, gives Nash “a major unsolved problem in the then fairly new field of nonlinear theory” (218). Nash is soon regularly visiting Nirenberg’s office to outline his ideas, which are largely “far off the mark” (219). Despite this, his methods are as original as ever as he works “from scratch without using standard techniques” (219).

Eventually, Nash’s techniques begin to show some success, approaching the matter in “an ingeniously roundabout manner” (219) that allows him some significant breakthroughs and convinces several mathematicians that he is, indeed, “a genius” (219). However, Nash sees his research of this period as a failure because he discovers that “a then-obscure young Italian, Ennio de Giorgi, had proven his continuity theorem a few months earlier (219).

While attending the IAS, Nash spends his time “talking with physicists and mathematicians about quantum theory” (221), one time becoming so argumentative about the subject that the incident warrants “a lengthy letter of apology” (220).